An Irish Christmas Feast (13 page)

Hector sat upright in the car, a look of affront on his face.

‘My dear Father Murphy,' said he, ‘I have never drunk before a performance and I don't propose to start now.'

That night Hector slept soundly. He spent most of the following day walking up and down the laneway rehearsing his lines and his movements. He would have been happier with a dress rehearsal but given the circumstances he realised it would be out of the question. During his travels he kept an eye out for Jack Scalp. He had already developed a mental picture of the scoundrel and felt that he would instantly recognise him should their paths cross. He had made up his mind to ignore Father Murphy's warning and was determined to force his way into the kitchen if necessary. If needs be he would exercise his acting skills to their fullest. They had saved him in the past and, with simple presence of mind, would do so again. He drank not at all on Christmas Eve, resolving to splurge on a bellyful of booze as soon as he received his wages. He ate sparingly from the few provisions which Mrs Melrick had left out for him on the wickerwork table in the annex. He made a final inspection of the laneway before calling to the presbytery where Father Murphy awaited him.

‘It's a pretty large bag as you can see,' the cleric advised him, ‘and there are thirteen households in all. Tarry awhile in the kitchen of each before passing on to the next and take special care at the thirteenth for it is there, as I have told you, that Jack Scalp resides.'

‘I'll take care,' Hector promised. If Father Murphy had noticed the contemptuous note in his voice he kept it to himself.

‘I will drive you as far as the entrance to the laneway,' he told Hector. He stood by fingering his chin while his protégé fitted the false off-white beard. An elastic band held it firmly in place. Next came the boots which were a size too large but better too large than too small he thought. Then came the hat and finally the long red coat which reached down to his toes.

‘Is there a life-size mirror?'

‘'Fraid not,' Father told him, ‘we don't indulge in such vanities in this presbytery but you can take it from me that you look the part.'

Father Murphy wondered if he should inform him of the incident which had occurred on the previous Christmas Eve but decided against it. He had already told him to be on his guard. Anyway no great damage had been done, just a bloody nose and that had stopped bleeding after a few moments. The elderly member of the St Vincent de Paul Society who had filled the role at the time had been drinking all afternoon and when he had pushed Mrs Scalp aside in order to confront her husband he realised that he had bitten off more than he could chew. A string of expletives directed towards him had the effect of momentarily paralysing him. He immediately dropped his bag and made for the door. In vain did Mrs Scalp try to restrain her drunken husband. He knocked her to the floor and landed a solid punch on the somewhat outsize, puce-coloured proboscis of Father Christmas. The blow might have been followed by another but Jack Scalp tripped across a beer crate and fell in a heap on the floor. His intended victim emitted a cry of relief and never drew breath until he arrived at the presbytery, his artificial beard well and truly bloodied. He collapsed onto a chair, gasping for whiskey. His account of the incident differed greatly from the actual facts. He had, according to himself, fought a heroic fight and was forced to retreat lest he do further damage and maybe even be the cause of widowing poor Mrs Scalp who was fully exonerated for not taking sides.

Hector was rapturously received by the parents and children in the first house he entered. Whiskey and wine were pressed upon him so that he found himself unable to resist. It was the same at all the other homes. His best efforts to refuse the liquor which was so generously pressed upon him were to no avail. Glass after glass of whiskey found its way to his palate and later to his brain. He was, as he would say later, almost suffocated with alcohol.

‘You're a big, brave man,' one poor woman had said to him, ‘what's a little drop of drink to you?'

He was never possessed of the mettle to refuse drink when kindly souls insisted he partake. In one house a selection of sandwiches awaited him and in another a plate of crackers and cheddar. ‘The poor are so open-hearted,' he would say later to Father Murphy, ‘they would give you their hearts.'

Father Murphy concurred. He had more than adequate proof of the veracity of Hector Fitzpitter's conclusions.

Children sat on Hector's lap and plied him with dainties. A few days hence and the cupboards would be bare once more all along the little laneway but here was Christmas and it was a time for giving and no better man to receive than this outstanding representation of Santa Claus, undoubtedly the most colourful ever to visit the laneway. Hector was quite overcome in the face of such bounty, such cordiality, such love! In some of the houses there were sessions of hymn-singing and in others storytelling. Hector Fitzpitter never played so many roles in so short a time.

It was well on the road to midnight when he reached the last house. Drunk as he was he had not forgotten Father Murphy's warning. He drew himself up to his full height. He had played a bear once in
A Winter's Tale
and for a moment was tempted to roar like one. He resisted the urge and gently knocked at the door. None came to answer. He listened for a while but could hear nothing. He knelt and placed an ear against the keyhole. After a short spell there came the most unpropitious sounds. No actor, he told himself, could create such heart-rending whimperings. Faint and childlike, they seemed to emanate from the very depths of human despair. Hardened as he was Hector Fitzpitter found himself physically bereft of strength so moved was he by the broken whinings, eerie and awesome. They succeeded in transmitting a devastating anguish to his heart, an anguish that he had never before experienced. The salt tears coursed down his face and into his adopted beard as he silently rose to his feet determined to put an end to the pitiful ejaculations which so provoked his newly found humanity.

He knocked loudly upon the door and, upon receiving no response knocked as loudly as his clenched fists would allow. It was opened by a child, a tear-stained, grimy, undernourished little girl who looked at him with wonder-filled eyes. Behind her stood an equally famished little boy and then, suddenly, there were four more boys and girls, so obviously neglected and deprived, so stunted and wan of face that they looked as if they were all the same age.

‘It's Santa Claus,' one whispered. Then in subdued confirmation all mentioned the name revered by children everywhere.

Cautiously Hector made his way into the kitchen. There was little light save that shed by a paraffin lamp with its wick turned down almost fully. There was no trace of a fire although the night was cold. There was no sign of the mother. The father, Jack Scalp, sat in a corner, his legs stretched in front of him, empty beer bottles all around and a partly filled noggin of whiskey clutched in one of his grimy hands. He snored fitfully. The little girl who had opened the door pressed a finger to her lips entreating silence from the visitor.

‘Where is your mother?' Hector asked in a whisper.

‘He put her out.' Every one of the six pointed a finger at their sleeping father.

‘Why?' Hector asked.

‘No why,' the girl who had opened the door replied.

‘He does it all the time,' another whispered.

‘If he wakes he'll beat us again,' said another still.

‘For no reason of course?' Hector suggested. A chorus of affirmative whispers greeted his question.

‘I have presents for everybody,' he informed the delighted children. How their faces transformed at the news.

‘How little it takes,' Hector told himself between sobs and sighs, ‘to please a child!'

He looked from one to the other of the angelic faces and was appalled by the bruises and bloodstains thereon. Hector Fitzpitter would never have the slightest compunction about kicking a fellow-thespian in the rear or socking him one to the jaw but to molest a child in such a fashion smacked of base cowardice and naked savagery.

‘Your deliverance is at hand,' he announced solemnly to the children, now making not the least effort to lower his tone. He gathered them round him, quite overcome by the angelic radiance of their faces.

‘I want you,' Hector informed them as he allowed his hands to linger on each individual head and face, ‘to go and find your mother. I want you to bring her here no matter how she protests. Tell her that it was I, Santa Claus, who sent you. Go now.'

In a flash the children departed.

‘Now my fine fellow,' Hector addressed the snorting drunkard in the corner, ‘let us determine the quality of thy kidney. Awake fellow!' he bawled, ‘awake to meet thy just deserts for as sure as there are stars in the heavens outside justice will be done in this house. Awake lout!' he roared at the top of his voice.

Blearily, angrily, torrents of the vilest curses exploding from his beer-stained mouth, Jack Scalp struggled to his feet. Upon beholding Santa Claus and nobody else he squeezed upon his whiskey noggin and would have smashed it against Hector's head had not the actor seized the hand that would smite him and brought its owner to his knees. Possessed of hitherto untapped strength Hector seized Jack Scalp by the throat and lifted him to his feet.

‘My strength is as the strength of ten,' he roared quoting Tennyson, ‘because my heart is pure.'

For the first time in his life Jack Scalp started to experience real fear. That he was in the presence of a madman he had absolutely no doubt. Hector flung him violently into the corner he had just vacated and stomped around the kitchen like one berserk. Suddenly he stopped.

‘Do you know me?' he asked the cowering figure, askew in his corner.

Fearfully Jack shook head. He would have taken flight but that he was paralysed with fear.

‘I,' said Hector, ‘am the Bearded Monster of Tontagio. I have killed seventeen men in my time and maimed a hundred others. Make your peace with God while you may, you scurvy wretch, lest I send you to your maker this instant.'

So saying, Hector entered fully into the role he had created and played a thousand times. He stalked round the kitchen, striking further terror into his victim with maniacal roars of laughter.

‘Rise!' he commanded. Jack Scalp staggered to his feet, drooling now, certain that his demise was at hand. From an inside pocket in the great red coat Hector withdrew Mrs Melrick's turf-shed hatchet and flung it at the cowering creature in the corner, making sure that he barely missed his head. Then seizing him by the throat he spread-eagled him across the kitchen table and choked him to within a breath of suffocation until the table collapsed beneath the squirming, wriggling child-beater.

Hector lifted him to his feet and slapped his face several times before seizing him by the throat yet again. Red froth bubbled from the monster's mouth as he applied the pressure to his victim's throat. Hector had bitten his tongue, just enough to assure that his spittle would be suitably coloured. Once again he flung the drooling drunkard to one side before presenting another terrifying facet of the monster's make-up. He started to smite upon his chest as though he were a gorilla. The grunting and screeching, the hysterical jabbering and high-pitched screaming which accompanied these most recent gestures were diabolical in the extreme. Jack Scalp fainted.

‘Awake villain!' Hector Fitzpitter roared, ‘awake to thy fate!'

With that he poured the remains of the abandoned whiskey noggin over the prostrate drunkard's face. Stuttering and begging forgiveness Jack Scalp crawled cravenly around the kitchen, sometimes seizing the trouser legs of his tormentor as he begged for mercy.

‘I am tempted to kill you,' Hector spoke in what he believed were spine-chilling tones, the same tones that had sent faint-hearted rustics scampering for the exits before the enactment of another gruesome murder on the stage.

‘Spare me. Spare me!' Jack screamed. ‘Spare me and I will change my ways.'

‘On your knees then.' Hector stood by with hands behind his back.

‘Say after me,' he commanded, ‘I will never from this moment forth molest my wife or children again.'

He waited as Jack Scalp repeated the words.

‘I will never,' Hector continued, ‘to the day I die, taste an intoxicating drink. I will be a model husband and father and I will devote the remainder of my life to the welfare of my children.'

‘If you fail to honour your promises on this most sacred of nights I, the Monster of Tantagio, will return,' Hector's ominous tones were terrifying in the extreme, ‘and I will split you right down the middle with this hatchet I hold in my hand.'

Silently Hector lifted his empty sack and disappeared into the night. There was no applause, no standing ovation, no cries of author! Yet Hector knew in his heart of hearts that he had given the finest performance of his career. Actors are never fully satisfied, no more than playwrights are after a play has been performed, but Hector had accomplished what all actors aspire to and few achieve. He had given the perfect performance. It mattered not that there was no audience and that there were no critics. He had fulfilled his lifelong dream and developments thereafter would prove him right. Early on the morning of Christmas Day, Jack Scalp presented himself to Father Murphy and took a lifetime pledge against intoxicating drink. It was a pledge he would keep. Never again would he spit at, shout at or molest in any way whatsoever his long-suffering wife and family. He turned into a model father and became one of the parish's most respected figures. Hector Fitzpitter's acting improved. He benefited greatly from his performance at the abode of Jack Scalp. During the following summer a new version of his masterpiece was warmly received by audiences and critics alike.

The twins Mickelow, Patcheen and Pius, were lookalikes, proportionately built, robust and round and standing at five feet two inches in their stockinged feet.

‘They don't chase work,' their parish priest Canon Mulgrave confided to a new curate, ‘but they won't avoid it either so that you couldn't very well call them ne'er do wells.'

‘Would you call them easy-going then?' the curate had suggested respectfully.

‘Yes,' the canon conceded after some consideration, ‘easy-going would be a fair characterisation.'

For the most part the twins worked for local farmers on a temporary basis. They were paid at the going rate at the end of each day. These modest but undisclosed earnings were supplemented by the weekly dole which the state provided all the year round.

By parochial standards the twins Mickelow would be classified as comfortable. They also had a cow. She provided milk and, as a consequence, sufficient butter for their needs.

The cow grazed throughout most of the spring, summer and autumn in the one-acre haggard at the rear of the house. In the winter she was transferred to the Long Acre except in the direst circumstances when the weather became unbearable, when she would be temporarily housed with a limited supply of fodder. On the Long Acre which in this instance extended to the nearest crossroads at either side of the house her search for grass would be supervised by one of the brothers. There was always the danger that in her eagerness to locate choice pickings she would over-reach herself and end up in one of the roadside dykes, very often filled with water during the months of January and February. Sometimes in areas of high risk she would be tethered as she sought sustenance beneath the bare hedgerows which sheltered the grassy margins of the narrow roadway.

In many ways the twins enjoyed an idyllic existence untroubled by strife or want. A small garden, sheltered from the prevailing wind by a narrow stand of Sitkas, provided potatoes and the more common vegetables such as turnip and cabbage. A latticed hen-coop overhung the wall above the front door in the kitchen and a sturdy hen-house of the lean-to variety rested against the rear of the house next to the back door. It had successfully resisted countless incursions from fox and otter since its erection. There were surplus eggs throughout most of the year and these could be exchanged for provisions when the itinerant egg buyer made his weekly call. Gentle and mild-mannered, the twins seldom or ever entertained conflicting opinions. Among strangers they were deferential and meek unless drawn into conversation. Even among those they knew they would be the last to initiate any form of communication.

Fuel for their fires was to be found in abundance in the adjacent bogland where they enjoyed turbary rights for generations. The quality was excellent and a small extra rick was held over until the week before Christmas when it would be disposed of to a local buyer who sold lorry loads to customers in the nearest town.

On Friday nights and Sunday nights they would unfailingly make their companionable way to the crossroads public house which was situated a little over a mile from their thatched abode. Arriving at nine they would depart at twelve. Four pints of stout was their nightly intake. Neither smoked or gambled. Neither paid court to females or fornicated in any way and neither visited the nearest town which nestled comfortably at the centre of a large fertile valley fifteen miles distant over dirt roads and tar roads. As a result they were never short of the wherewithal to indulge their crossroads excursions provided, they often reminded each other, that they stayed within the constraints agreed by themselves. These self-imposed limitations ordained that they attach themselves to no company other than their own. However if a drink chanced to come their way from some drunken or other well-meaning benefactor they allowed themselves the liberty to accept so long as it was clearly understood that nothing was to be expected in return.

There were always bountiful times in the height of summer when Yanks and English exiles came home on holiday. Then the drink would flow freely and there would be morning hangovers but nothing else and by this was meant, as far as the twins Mickelow were concerned, that there had been no extra financial outlay.

Those who came from England in particular spent heedlessly until all their hard-earned money was gone and they were obliged to return to the construction sites where abundant overtime had helped to finance the holiday in the first place. Full credit to them, they never mourned after their vanished earnings nor did they expect anything in return for their profligacy. They seem resigned, even content in themselves that their pockets were empty.

The twins had often been tempted to call a drink for their one-time benefactors, now possessed of nothing save a return ticket, but after weighing the merits and demerits thought better of it and resigned themselves to the prevailing attitude that such misplaced kindness might only result in a demeaning postponement of the exile's departure.

There had, in fact, been at least one occasion when the exile had remained behind as a result of not one but several acts of misplaced charity. After a week he became a travesty of the carefree holidaymaker who had breezed in the door a few short weeks before. Eventually for his own good he was frozen out and, all too long after his allotted time, departed the scene an abject and pathetic reject, the victim of ill-considered philanthropy.

‘Never go against the tide boy,' Pius Mickelow had warned his brother Patcheen at the time. From the opposite side of the hearth Patcheen had nodded emphatically in total agreement.

Then came a particularly bitter winter of ice and snow and great sweeping gales, a winter that imposed a heavier than usual levy on the vulnerable and the elderly. The twins would remind each other that such winters were to be expected from time to time, winters that gave no quarter and for some winters against which there was no defence.

Several old folk would pass on before the snows melted on the more elevated hilltops. Among these was a neighbour of the Mickelows, an eighty-five-year-old cottier and widower, one Daniel Doody, who had been nursed throughout the final weeks of his illness by his forty-five-year-old daughter who had given up her position as a domestic in the distant city of Cork and come home to attend to her ailing parent.

He bore his suffering bravely and all were agreed that his only offspring Kitty was truly a ministering angel if ever there was one.

Night and day she cared for him, luring him to upright positions on what would eventually be his death-bed with tit-bits and delicacies which had been prepared with love and devotion.

When, eventually, he expired, holding her hand, the hearts of the entire countryside went out to her but none more so than those of the twins Mickelow who had kept themselves discreetly at hand at all times when the old man strove to hang on forever to that which had been no more than a brief loan in the first place.

Patcheen Mickelow, in particular, was frequently moved beyond words as Kitty Doody tiptoed quietly to and fro uncomplainingly. Never once did she make mention of her position in the city of Cork or of her lifestyle there. Rumour had it that she had once been friendly with a soldier but that he had left her for another after several fruitless years of courtship. Others had it that she had been a cook in a convent before leaving to take up a housekeeping post with an elderly schoolmaster. Still more maintained that she had worked as a drudge in an establishment of disrepute. There were other more fanciful tales but, as with all such idle speculation, another topic would displace it in no time at all.

Shortly after the moment of expiry on the fateful night Kitty Doody, her blue eyes filled with anguish, looked helplessly at the Mickelow twins who had been in close attendance all night. She had summoned them that evening in the realisation that the old man was nearing his end. He had been anointed the day before by Canon Mulgrave. The elderly cleric had advised Kitty that she should be prepared for the worst and in consolatory tones assured her that her father would surely see heaven. A last feeble cry followed by a low choking sound heralded his passing.

‘I'll go for the priest,' Patcheen Mickelow had announced with fitting solemnity.

‘And I'll go for the neighbours,' Pius had volunteered.

During the wake which followed, in the absence of relatives, the twins Mickelow acted as chief stewards and masters of ceremonies. It was they who distributed the wine, whiskey and stout and it was they who polished and shone the holders for the death candles. It was they who replenished the traditional saucers of snuff on mantelpiece, table and cranny all though the long night and morning.

During the wake Pius drank his fill but never allowed himself to cross the threshold of drunkenness. For his part Patcheen allowed not a tint of liquor to pass his lips.

Afterwards when the whole business was at an end Patcheen would partake of a drink or two but for the duration of the wake proper and while it was in progress he resolved that he would be the most responsible man at that wake. Of the twins he was by far the more resolute. It was he who decided that the town should be out of bounds after Pius was struck on the jaw one night many years before with a dustered fist for no reason whatsoever. The blackguards he encountered in the gents toilet had never seen him before nor had he seen them. Patcheen quite properly deduced that the only reasons why his twin was felled were his small stature and inoffensive manner. His pockets had not been rifled and he had not spoken a word.

‘He is the sort,' Patcheen confided to the publican in whose premises the assault had taken place, ‘who draws trouble on himself because of the way God made him.' He counted himself lucky to have escaped similar treatment himself at the hands of the many drunken blackguards who pack-hunted in large towns after dark.

Pius agreed instantly when Patcheen suggested that they stick thereafter to familiar haunts where they were known and respected.

After the burial of Daniel Doody the Mickelows decided that they would not present themselves at the Doody household until such time as they were invited. Fine, they felt, to have made themselves available during the latter stages of the old man's illness but it would not be altogether appropriate to do so now without good reason.

Spring would be well advanced with the wild daffodils withdrawn and brown before such an invitation would be extended. In between they occasionally met Kitty on the roadway and they nodded respectfully towards each other after mass on Sundays. Sometimes there would be words but these, for the most part, would be confined to views about the weather although Patcheen suspected that a more protracted exchange might not be unwelcome as far as Kitty Doody was concerned. For all that he played his cards in the conventional way and felt himself well rewarded when the invitation came on the final day of April. Pius was mightily pleased in his own way although the twins knew full well that the reason behind the summons was most likely related to the cutting and harvesting of the turf supply for the winter ahead.

For some years before his death as infirmity rendered him less active they had been hired by the late Daniel Doody to cut, foot and draw home the dry crop in their ancient but still serviceable ass-rail.

The drawing home was usually accomplished in less than a week and at the end of that time Daniel Doody's turf shed would be full to the rafters.

When they arrived at the Doody house they were made welcome at the doorway by the sole occupant, the beaming Kitty, who took note of their sheepishness by seating them near the hearth and handing each a freshly opened bottle of stout.

The Mickelows were pleased to learn that it was fresh and in prime condition. They would have been just as pleased to accept stout left over from the wake but this, they would be at pains to explain, was not Kitty's way at all.

She sat herself by the large, wooden table while the visitors drew on their bottles. They spoke about many matters. Every subject, in fact, was up for discussion save the one which brought them. That would be aired in its own time. It would have been a blatant breach of good manners to bring it up prematurely.

When a second bottle of stout and all the conventional topics had been exhausted Kitty Doody spoke for the first time about turf.

‘I was wondering,' she said as her sad blue eyes swept the kitchen and finally the hearth-place where the twins were seated, ‘what I should do about the winter's firing?'

‘Turf is it you're worried about?' It was Patcheen who spoke on behalf of the pair.

‘Turf it is,' Kitty confirmed.

‘Let turf be the least of your worries,' Patcheen assured her.

‘The very least of your worries,' his brother Pius added lest there be the slightest doubt about it.

‘Her turf will be cut won't it boy?' Patcheen turned to Pius knowing full well what the answer would be. They had discussed the subject often enough across the winter nights.

‘Let someone else try to cut it,' Pius had whispered to himself with uncharacteristic ferocity. Now the words gushed forth like a torrent as he pledged his commitment.

‘We will first clean the turf-bank of scraws,' he said, ‘and then we will cut it and foot it and refoot it and then we will make it up into donkey stoolins and then come September when it will be well seasoned we will fill your shed to the rafters.'

‘That is exactly what we will do,' Patcheen concurred proudly. He was about to add further reassurances of his own but Pius had not yet finished.

‘We will not be charging you a brown penny,' he rushed out the words lest he suddenly dry up, ‘for we would be poor neighbours if we did not help a lady in a pucker.'

‘Oh we can't have that,' Kitty tried not to sound half-hearted, ‘we can't have that at all. The labourer is worthy of his hire.'

‘Not these labourers!' Patcheen cut across, ‘these labourers is doing it out of the goodness of their hearts so there will be no more talk about hire.'